Upwind Handling & Performance

Most tuning guides for centerboard dinghies and scows tell you to raise your board 1-2″ in heavy air. In this post we’ll briefly discuss three reasons why this is important. This post updates our previous post on setting leeboard height…

Struggling with boat speed? Want to sail more by feel? Understanding and managing helm balance will help. In this post we’ll discuss the factors affecting upwind helm balance and give examples of how to apply them. We’ll cover downwind helm…

Here’s a drill to sharpen your puff response techniques. Most sailors know about “ease/hike/trim,” but many do not execute it well in different wind conditions. The No-Hike Hands Drill will help train your hands to respond correctly in a variety…

Are you a newer racing sailor? If so, sailing fast upwind may be one of the toughest things to learn. This post captures a virtual clinic with several newer sailors at the Lake Beulah Yacht Club. We focused the clinic…

Boats with only a mainsail (no jib), sometimes called cat-rigged boats, sail upwind with their boom further out than boats with jibs. Most of these main-only boats use “boom over the corner” as an initial trim reference. (The corner refers…

As a beginning sailor, your editor had to learn to sheet the mainsail hard enough to control the leech and point. So it was hard for me to understand the phrase “When in doubt, let it out.” Vaughan Harrison shows…